How the indie Jamestown, a 2D shooter and instant classic, was born

A small team spent two years and the majority of the members' savings to do …

Jamestown is a 2D, top-down shoot-em-up for the PC. It is $10 on Steam, and you should buy it. The story is simple: you play as Sir Walter Raleigh, and you're fighting your way through 17th century British Colonial... Mars?

"Sure, it's an absurd premise, but that's one of the nice things about being indie; if you want to make an alt-historical shooter set on 17th-century British colonial Mars (and starring Sir Walter Raleigh in his sixties), there's no one to tell you that you can't," Mike Ambrogi of Final Form games told Ars. It's not just the graphics and premise that are special though. The game has been in development for two years, and that time has been spent on polishing the experience to a blinding shine. If you placed this game on a Dreamcast disc and told me it was a lost Treasure release, I would have believed you.

The team was gracious enough to answer our questions about the game's development in detail, and the lessons to be learned are extensive: iterate endlessly, playtest constantly, and analyze what came before. The result is a shooter that feels fresh, while looking classical. Here's how they did it.

How it works

The game is designed to be played with up to four people on the same computer, and you can use keyboards, mice, or wired 360 controllers to control your ship. The respawn mechanic is brutal in its simplicity: if one player dies, the other has to stay alive for a set amount of time before the dead player is brought back. As you raise the difficulty level of the game, the amount of time it takes for the other player to respawn increases. This puts immense pressure on the surviving player, who also needs to keep their eyes open for respawn tokens that can bring the other player back from the dead instantly.

By collecting cogs that enemies drop, you also fill up your "Vaunt" meter. When this is filled you can activate a shield that offers protection from enemy bullets, and can also be used to protect the other players. Using your Vaunt power also increases the points you gain for killing the enemies, and used wisely will lead to much higher scores, not to mention an increased life expectancy.

The real thrills happen during boss bottles when one player is left fighting for survival, nothing left in their Vaunt meter, praying to make it through the swarm of bullets until the other player spawns. This is a game where white knuckles are the norm, not the exception.

It all works and feels great

While the mechanics sometimes subvert what you're used to from 2D shooters, the real surprise here is the level of polish and care put into every aspect of the game. It simply feels wonderful to play, and that's not an accident. "From the moment of our company's inception, we placed a very high value on the idea of craftsmanship," Ambrogi said. "We wanted every inch of our first game, every enemy, every button, every minute of gameplay, to feel hand-crafted and special."

The game features 45 unique enemies, six bosses, and the team actually built their own engine that allowed for fast iterations and prototyping. The game's mechanics and enemy placement were tweaked and adjusted and improved time after time before they found what works.

"We built our core technology around our core design/development philosophy, which is that rapid prototyping is the key to making good games," he said. "We knew, or at least believed, that we'd find better ideas the more iterations we could afford, so reducing the cost of iteration was a primary goal." This proved key, as they were able to run through a "frankly huge" number of bad ideas before they were able to find ideas and concepts they liked.

Jamestown

There was also the challenge of finding a way to make four-player co-op work in a shooter environment and have it feel unique to their game with the respawn and Vaunt system. The games they looked at for inspiration were far-flung, and included Left 4 Dead and Rock Band. Both gamers were far from the shooter genre, but they both had interesting ideas about how to bring your friends back from the dead. "Their influence is hopefully pretty easy to spot in Jamestown, from the timed respawn and 'Revive Token' system for bringing back dead teammates to the stacking Vaunt multipliers and 5-star high-level score representation," Ambrogi explained. "We think our game is pretty special, but it's definitely standing on the shoulders of giants in many respects."

Enemy placement as a scientific problem

After finishing the game I remarked that enemy placement was handled very well in Jamestown, and that in shooters this seemed to be more art than science. I was gently corrected.

"We were actually pretty scientific about it, believe it or not, though it's true that at the placement stage, there's a lot of horse-sense that comes into play," he said. They analyzed their favorite shooters, and timed things like the duration of levels and boss fights. They figured out how much time passed between new gameplay ideas in games like Ikaruga and Dondonpachi. "There's a good amount of stylistic variation between the classics of the genre, but trends do tend to emerge," Ambrogi said.

"The big idea, though, is that no enemy is an island. In most shooters, the 'family' of enemies in each level, and the way they attack you in a huge variety of combinations, is really the lion's share of the experience of playing that level; it quite literally is the gameplay," he continued. He also called even that level of design "useless" without constant playtesting, and in fact during the credits the largest amount of names are under the testing section. This wasn't an accident.

"We found that the best way to create a smooth level flow is to test the gameplay over and over, on your own and with blind testers, and think consciously about the intensity curve," Ambrogi said. "It's just impossible to overstate the value of playtesting. We were revisiting and tuning placements, health totals, movement speeds, and bullet patterns right up to the day of the gold master, because our clarity was constantly improving on what did and didn't work."

The music for the game is also incredible, and it goes a long way to creating the game's mood. The game was scored by a Chilean musician named Francisco Cerda who was "discovered" by the team when he began to play the piano in the house they were sharing. He later returned to Chile, but when no other musician measured up, he was tapped to provide music for the game.

"We worked together on the music for nearly 7 months," Tim Ambrogi, who is also a trained composer, told Ars. "Sometimes, he would score the level we had created, as was the case with the first half of Dark Sector. Other times, such as Croatoa, we built the level to match the music that he written for us." This wasn't a case of the score being laid on top of the gameplay, as the music was used as both the score and inspiration for the game at various points of development.

"When your goal is to provide your players with the most powerful and immersive experience possible, music must be a major focus," Tim explained. "This is especially true in a shooter, where you have very little time to synchronize the player's emotional state with the intensity of the game."

The lack of online multiplayer

One of the most glaring issues with the game is the lack of any kind of online multiplayer. If you want to play with your friends, you're going to have to invite them over and hook up multiple controllers. "This was absolutely a technical decision," Tim Ambrogi explained. "As anyone who has written an online multiplayer game knows, it can be an extremely expensive feature, and it is best implemented as-you-go from the very beginning of development."

The problem is that multiplayer is a very tricky thing in shooters, and this creates even more problems. "In particular, the shooter genre presents a fairly serious challenge, with as many as 4,000 fast-moving replicated objects, a need for very responsive controls, and gameplay where fast reaction times play a major role in the experience," he said. "An online version would need to employ extremely clever solutions to work around the limits of bandwidth, latency, and coherence. It would also require writing both server and client versions of much of the gameplay code, increasing the cost of gameplay iteration."

He stressed that he does believe it can be done, and done well, but it was simply too large a technical challenge for a game with such a small team focusing so heavily on the core gameplay, art, and music.

This is a must-play for fans of the genre

When Final Form games first contacted me about covering its game I was skeptical, but I invited a friend over with his laptop. We were disappointed when we realized co-op had to take place on the same screen, but I wanted to get a review ready so we soldiered on, and around four hours later we had beaten the campaign on the lowest possible difficulty.

It was an amazing ride, and there are still the higher difficulty levels to master, as well as a series of challenge missions to test your skill. While the game may seem like it lacks a large number of levels, the changes that occur when you increase the difficulty level, the bonus missions, and the different ships that all play differently do much to increase the replay value. For $10, this is a steal.

After talking to the team behind the game and seeing how much time, thought, and passion they poured into the game to achieve this level of quality, I was even more impressed. This is a confident, brilliant game, and for it to come from the indie scene and be released in such a well-honed form is even rarer.

"We knew we had made a game that we loved, but we really had no idea how the gaming press and the public at large would react," Hal Larsson of Final Form games told Ars. "It's been incredible watching professional writers really throw their shoulders into expressing exactly what they like about our game." They can add us to the list of fans, and after you buy the game, I think you'll feel the same.

The problem is that multiplayer is a very tricky thing in shooters, and this creates even more problems. "In particular, the shooter genre presents a fairly serious challenge, with as many as 4,000 fast-moving replicated objects, a need for very responsive controls, and gameplay where fast reaction times play a major role in the experience," he said. "An online version would need to employ extremely clever solutions to work around the limits of bandwidth, latency, and coherence. It would also require writing both server and client versions of much of the gameplay code, increasing the cost of gameplay iteration."

He forgot that many of us are just sick of multiplayer being an on-line only component. Forget the technical reasoning, some of us remember how much more enjoyable it was to hit up a beat-em-up like Streets of Rage or a good multiplayer-optional top-down-shooter like the Raiden series, all while standing shoulder to shoulder with your friends at the arcade.

It's sad that when friends come over, the first inclination for all of us is that we should break out the Wii. There's just too little in terms of local multiplayer/co-op games these days on other platforms that isn't a lame party compilation. Worse, is that there are plenty of games that would readily work with local multiplay, yet don't include that as an option.

I wish more developers would learn from these "lessons learned". While lack of remote multiplayer is a downer it seems that the team knew their resources and made the correct decision instead of jamming it in in a half baked implementation that ruins the game.

*shrug* I didn't say "DOWN WITH THIS GAME", I lamented the lack of a Mac (or XBL, 360, PSN, PS3, or Wii, Wii Store, DS, 3DS, or Dreamcast) version. As a giant fan of shooters (I have an extensive collection of Japanese imports dating back to the Saturn days), I am sad that it's not on a platform that I have that can play it (which is basically anything but the PC).

*shrug* I didn't say "DOWN WITH THIS GAME", I lamented the lack of a Mac (or XBL, 360, PSN, PS3, or Wii, Wii Store, DS, 3DS, or Dreamcast) version. As a giant fan of shooters (I have an extensive collection of Japanese imports dating back to the Saturn days), I am sad that it's not on a platform that I have that can play it (which is basically anything but the PC).

Load a windows xp vm? I'm sure you can find a copy somewhere.Edit: Not vm, that would be horrid I imagine considering I can't get win 7 desktop effects in vmware. Use boot camp and get a windows install for just your games, yea it's another step but platform agnostic gaming isn't a reality yet, it's a windows world.

*shrug* I didn't say "DOWN WITH THIS GAME", I lamented the lack of a Mac (or XBL, 360, PSN, PS3, or Wii, Wii Store, DS, 3DS, or Dreamcast) version. As a giant fan of shooters (I have an extensive collection of Japanese imports dating back to the Saturn days), I am sad that it's not on a platform that I have that can play it (which is basically anything but the PC).

The same can be said of any iOS game, or any xBox game, or any PS3 game that doesn't come out on PC. We all say "Sounds fun, but no on pc." Exclusives aren't new, and for a small team, they invested their efforts on perfecting the experience in one place first. Later down the road, I could see this coming to other platforms, but for a team so heavily focused on playtesting and getting the experience just right they invested in one of the most indie-friendly locations: Steam, on PC. I can't fault them for that.

They had limited resources, and from Ben's write-up they made smart decisions. I understand your point, I do the same thing when a game comes out that sounds fun and then I read "xbox only" (especially so, there, as DirectX is on both!).

But I'd rather have a great game that comes late to my platform, than an average game that comes out on multiple. And quite frankly, this game would flop hard if it wasn't great. It is definitely NOT mainstream.

I would probably get it except for the lack of online multiplayer. As a father and "adult gamer" (as hard as it is to say that) it is just too difficult to get anyone to come over and play, forget about sitting around a PC to play it.

I would probably get it except for the lack of online multiplayer. As a father and "adult gamer" (as hard as it is to say that) it is just too difficult to get anyone to come over and play, forget about sitting around a PC to play it.

Play with your kids? Hook a PC up to a TV (they are just big monitors now ya know...).

The same can be said of any iOS game, or any xBox game, or any PS3 game that doesn't come out on PC. We all say "Sounds fun, but no on pc." Exclusives aren't new, and for a small team, they invested their efforts on perfecting the experience in one place first. Later down the road, I could see this coming to other platforms, but for a team so heavily focused on playtesting and getting the experience just right they invested in one of the most indie-friendly locations: Steam, on PC. I can't fault them for that.

There's been a trend recently (at least it seems to me) of indie studios doing both Mac and PC versions of their games, on and off of Steam. I admit that I clicked the Steam link to check myself if that was the case, being a SHMUP fan.

It's too bad it's not a vertical game or I'd try and get it to run on my arcade cabinet, assuming it could handle 480x640.

I would probably get it except for the lack of online multiplayer. As a father and "adult gamer" (as hard as it is to say that) it is just too difficult to get anyone to come over and play, forget about sitting around a PC to play it.

Play with your kids? Hook a PC up to a TV (they are just big monitors now ya know...).

She's 15 months old, it's not time yet to start grooming her. TV is in a different room across the house, I'm not buying $50 of cable to play a $10 game.

I would probably get it except for the lack of online multiplayer. As a father and "adult gamer" (as hard as it is to say that) it is just too difficult to get anyone to come over and play, forget about sitting around a PC to play it.

Play with your kids? Hook a PC up to a TV (they are just big monitors now ya know...).

I'll have a real tough time with that. I yell and curse too much.

Me: FUCK you little shit, where did you get the BFG?Wife(from the other room): Are you talking trash to your son again?Me: Little noob's got the BFG and is camping the rocket spawn, he plays like a bitch!

This sounds neat, I actually saw "Jamestown" on steam last night but didn't click through to investigate because of the bland title. While I understand why they did that it seems they're missing a big part of the first impression.

I'm with Nagumo on needing local multiplayer games that aren't on the Wii. Fortunately there are a few more now thanks to XBLA/PSN. Maybe Ars should do a local multiplayer roundup.

*shrug* I didn't say "DOWN WITH THIS GAME", I lamented the lack of a Mac (or XBL, 360, PSN, PS3, or Wii, Wii Store, DS, 3DS, or Dreamcast) version. As a giant fan of shooters (I have an extensive collection of Japanese imports dating back to the Saturn days), I am sad that it's not on a platform that I have that can play it (which is basically anything but the PC).

Load a windows xp vm? I'm sure you can find a copy somewhere.Edit: Not vm, that would be horrid I imagine considering I can't get win 7 desktop effects in vmware. Use boot camp and get a windows install for just your games, yea it's another step but platform agnostic gaming isn't a reality yet, it's a windows world.

It may be a Windows world, but that is slowly changing. Perhaps not with this or most titles, but I don't intend to buy this game until it has a Mac version. I refuse to dual boot just to play a game (or do most things).

I would probably get it except for the lack of online multiplayer. As a father and "adult gamer" (as hard as it is to say that) it is just too difficult to get anyone to come over and play, forget about sitting around a PC to play it.

Play with your kids? Hook a PC up to a TV (they are just big monitors now ya know...).

She's 15 months old, it's not time yet to start grooming her. TV is in a different room across the house, I'm not buying $50 of cable to play a $10 game.

Hah, well never too early to start eh?

Distance can be an issue, my game rig is usually in the "office" but when guests come over or I just want to game on the couch, I just unplug it (5 plugs, power, vid, sound, cat6, usb-hub) and walk it the living room where I have the same set of cords already waiting for it.

Including shutdown/startup times this is all less than 3 minutes.

If your PC is tangled in wires or not easily accessible this becomes less possible, but it's doable.

Great review Ben. Nice return to form. I think I might have to finally get around to installing steam for this game. Call me a luddite, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. But now, maybe so. I've been looking for something to quench the thirst left by Ikaruga. . .

A little off topic, I thought for a second the headline said "Janestown" and thought it was some sort of firefly game (yes, I realize in retrospect his name is spelled Jayne). I was a little sad when it wasn't.

And as a part time indie dev, I fully support their decision to leave out online multiplayer. When you're a small studio the effort vs payout is far too low. And as stated above, the world needs more good local co-op gameplay anyway. I've hit the same problem of wanting to play a game with friends that are over only to find it either doesn't support local co-op or only up to 2 players. If you're going to do local co-op, 4 should really be the number to shoot for.

One of the most glaring issues with the game is the lack of any kind of online multiplayer. If you want to play with your friends, you're going to have to invite them over and hook up multiple controllers....When Final Form games first contacted me about covering its game I was skeptical, but I invited a friend over with his laptop. We were disappointed when we realized co-op had to take place on the same screen...

What's wrong with gaming with friends in front of the same screen in person? It feels like online multiplayer is destroying the precious time that is playing with friends physically. There's nothing like trying to disrupt friends' gameplay in Super Smash Brothers or sharing the feelings of defeat as you both watch your characters get annihilated on the same screen. The lack of online play shouldn't be a glaring issue. It's my opinion that the lack of the feature could be a positive point as it increases physical social interaction, which is what all humans crave at the most primal level.

One of the most glaring issues with the game is the lack of any kind of online multiplayer. If you want to play with your friends, you're going to have to invite them over and hook up multiple controllers....When Final Form games first contacted me about covering its game I was skeptical, but I invited a friend over with his laptop. We were disappointed when we realized co-op had to take place on the same screen...

What's wrong with gaming with friends in front of the same screen in person? It feels like online multiplayer is destroying the precious time that is playing with friends physically. There's nothing like trying to disrupt friends' gameplay in Super Smash Brothers or sharing the feelings of defeat as you both watch your characters get annihilated on the same screen. The lack of online play shouldn't be a glaring issue. It's my opinion that the lack of the feature could be a positive point as it increases physical social interaction, which is what all humans crave at the most primal level.

Ben's quote can be taken two ways; I would lean towards interpreting it as "I was expecting online mp."

The other way would be LAN play, which seems to me technologically simpler (IANAD) and absolutely made Halo CE for the Xbox a whole big pile of fun. This gives each player his or her own screen but reduces (maybe) the networking and dev overhead necessary for true online play.

I would probably get it except for the lack of online multiplayer. As a father and "adult gamer" (as hard as it is to say that) it is just too difficult to get anyone to come over and play, forget about sitting around a PC to play it.

Play with your kids? Hook a PC up to a TV (they are just big monitors now ya know...).

I'll have a real tough time with that. I yell and curse too much.

Me: FUCK you little shit, where did you get the BFG?Wife(from the other room): Are you talking trash to your son again?Me: Little noob's got the BFG and is camping the rocket spawn, he plays like a bitch!

So you are introducing your son to the GREATEST part of deathmatch at an early age. Shooting... winning... losing... whatever. Everybody knows that deathmatch is for trash talk. Everything else is just the prefab excuse for said trash talk.

I would probably get it except for the lack of online multiplayer. As a father and "adult gamer" (as hard as it is to say that) it is just too difficult to get anyone to come over and play, forget about sitting around a PC to play it.

Play with your kids? Hook a PC up to a TV (they are just big monitors now ya know...).

I'll have a real tough time with that. I yell and curse too much.

Me: FUCK you little shit, where did you get the BFG?Wife(from the other room): Are you talking trash to your son again?Me: Little noob's got the BFG and is camping the rocket spawn, he plays like a bitch!

So you are introducing your son to the GREATEST part of deathmatch at an early age. Shooting... winning... losing... whatever. Everybody knows that deathmatch is for trash talk. Everything else is just the prefab excuse for said trash talk.

Not sure what you mean. "Everything else is just the prefab excuse for said trash talk." A bit of trash talk with friends is always great, even if the player sucks in co-op.

This was a really great piece with lots of worthwhile and interesting insight. Thanks Ben for showcasing such a great game in a meaningful way. I bought Jamestown on first sight as soon as it hit Steam, didn't even need to read a review or play the demo to see the genius of the game within the short Steam video clip alone.

I would probably get it except for the lack of online multiplayer. As a father and "adult gamer" (as hard as it is to say that) it is just too difficult to get anyone to come over and play, forget about sitting around a PC to play it.

Play with your kids? Hook a PC up to a TV (they are just big monitors now ya know...).

I'll have a real tough time with that. I yell and curse too much.

Me: FUCK you little shit, where did you get the BFG?Wife(from the other room): Are you talking trash to your son again?Me: Little noob's got the BFG and is camping the rocket spawn, he plays like a bitch!

So you are introducing your son to the GREATEST part of deathmatch at an early age. Shooting... winning... losing... whatever. Everybody knows that deathmatch is for trash talk. Everything else is just the prefab excuse for said trash talk.

Not sure what you mean. "Everything else is just the prefab excuse for said trash talk." A bit of trash talk with friends is always great, even if the player sucks in co-op.

I mean all the other game mechanics. The teams and the weapons and the flags for capturing etc. That's all just there to support a vibrant economy of trash talk.

I applaud the company for making a robust local multiplayer. However, I don't think you talked about how the game plays with just one person? If a key mechanic is "survive until your partner can respawn", how does the game work with single player?

I love me some local multiplayer, but we can't always have friends over.

This was a really great piece with lots of worthwhile and interesting insight. Thanks Ben for showcasing such a great game in a meaningful way. I bought Jamestown on first sight as soon as it hit Steam, didn't even need to read a review or play the demo to see the genius of the game within the short Steam video clip alone.

Yeah ever since I saw the trailer earlier this year I knew I had to have it. It coming out when it did was quite the surprise. I'm really proud of this three man squad with the tiny office.

DrHoneydew wrote:

I applaud the company for making a robust local multiplayer. However, I don't think you talked about how the game plays with just one person? If a key mechanic is "survive until your partner can respawn", how does the game work with single player?

I love me some local multiplayer, but we can't always have friends over.

Single player is like every other shmup. You get shot and you lose a life haha. It's just that they did the respawn thing for multiplayer to spark it up. Me and a friend both picked up a copy of Jamestown and I played with him on his copy and we both really enjoyed the respawn coin/time concept. It's present during challenge missions (yes even the Challenge missions have 4 player support) as well and that's when it gets really interesting.

Also to expand on what Ben was saying about the Vaunt system. 1) Destroying enemies drops cogs. The bigger they are the more cogs you get. Also every enemy has a 'special' way to kill them like destroying an enemy ship's four gun turrets before taking out the main ship will net you a special bonus for more and bigger cogs. 2) When you pick up the falling cogs it fills your meter. You almost want to always use your Vaunt early if you got the skills to survive. It's a big risk/reward tug of war at play here. You want to make sure that you keep killing to pick up more cogs. Cogs are the life blood of this game. Besides giving you a very large temporary shield (that works against almost of all of the bullets in the game) it also increases your attack power. If you die during your Vaunt you also lose all the points you would have earned. So either you don't die or...3) Press the Vaunt button again and you use what's left of your meter (which is being filled during your Vaunt as you continue to pick up cogs) for a last ditch shield. How big the shield is is determined by how full your Vaunt meter is at the time. When playing on the hardest difficulty (where an indestructible bullet comes into play) you'll probably have to do this often.

And each ship is VERY different from one another. It's not like with other shmups where one is faster or one is more powerful and slower. It's a bit deeper than that.

1) Beam: A machine gun with a wide spread is the main weapon and the secondary weapon is a powerful laser beam that slows you down when you use it. Much like DoDonPachi.2) Gunner: A straight firing machine gun is the main weapon while the second weapon is a multi-directional gun. Unlike most shmups where a directional gun is fired in the opposite direction you are moving, you have to set it and forget it when using this ship's gun. So point up while hitting the second attack button and it'll fire up until you reposition it. Tricky at first but it's a formidable craft.3) Charge: This ship charges up a big cannonball looking energy ball automatically. You just hit the secondary attack button to fire when you are ready. The main attack is just a machine gun. It's a potent attack since it rolls right through enemies like a bowling ball of death. 4) Bomber: The secondary attack explodes your machine gun's bullets. It works best at close range. I'm not a big fan of it. When you are being swarmed by enemies it seems like there's not much you can do to protect yourself outside of what's directly ahead of you. Tricky ship.

I think I've said enough. Just go buy the game folks. This is a rich experience even if you never invite anyone over to play with you.

I would probably get it except for the lack of online multiplayer. As a father and "adult gamer" (as hard as it is to say that) it is just too difficult to get anyone to come over and play, forget about sitting around a PC to play it.

Play with your kids? Hook a PC up to a TV (they are just big monitors now ya know...).

I'll have a real tough time with that. I yell and curse too much.

Me: FUCK you little shit, where did you get the BFG?Wife(from the other room): Are you talking trash to your son again?Me: Little noob's got the BFG and is camping the rocket spawn, he plays like a bitch!

One of the most glaring issues with the game is the lack of any kind of online multiplayer. If you want to play with your friends, you're going to have to invite them over and hook up multiple controllers....When Final Form games first contacted me about covering its game I was skeptical, but I invited a friend over with his laptop. We were disappointed when we realized co-op had to take place on the same screen...

What's wrong with gaming with friends in front of the same screen in person? It feels like online multiplayer is destroying the precious time that is playing with friends physically. There's nothing like trying to disrupt friends' gameplay in Super Smash Brothers or sharing the feelings of defeat as you both watch your characters get annihilated on the same screen. The lack of online play shouldn't be a glaring issue. It's my opinion that the lack of the feature could be a positive point as it increases physical social interaction, which is what all humans crave at the most primal level.

Ben's quote can be taken two ways; I would lean towards interpreting it as "I was expecting online mp."

The other way would be LAN play, which seems to me technologically simpler (IANAD) and absolutely made Halo CE for the Xbox a whole big pile of fun. This gives each player his or her own screen but reduces (maybe) the networking and dev overhead necessary for true online play.

++

My best time ever was playing 4-person co-op Gears of War 2 Horde mode locally with two screens and two 360s

And each ship is VERY different from one another. It's not like with other shmups where one is faster or one is more powerful and slower. It's a bit deeper than that.

1) Beam: A machine gun with a wide spread is the main weapon and the secondary weapon is a powerful laser beam that slows you down when you use it. Much like DoDonPachi.2) Gunner: A straight firing machine gun is the main weapon while the second weapon is a multi-directional gun. Unlike most shmups where a directional gun is fired in the opposite direction you are moving, you have to set it and forget it when using this ship's gun. So point up while hitting the second attack button and it'll fire up until you reposition it. Tricky at first but it's a formidable craft.3) Charge: This ship charges up a big cannonball looking energy ball automatically. You just hit the secondary attack button to fire when you are ready. The main attack is just a machine gun. It's a potent attack since it rolls right through enemies like a bowling ball of death. 4) Bomber: The secondary attack explodes your machine gun's bullets. It works best at close range. I'm not a big fan of it. When you are being swarmed by enemies it seems like there's not much you can do to protect yourself outside of what's directly ahead of you. Tricky ship.

I've played the game with all 4 ships and am quite disappointed with most of them. The Beam's secondary attack is completely opaque so it's quite easy to run into bullets or enemies and die while using it.

The Gunner is probably one of the best ships though very hard to use well. It would've helped if the game allowed it to control like a twin stick shmup a la Geometry Wars.

The Bomber seems extremely useless as the radius of the blown up bullets is quite small.

The game was fun but I'm wishing I had waited for it to go on sale for $5 or less.

It looks like the balance and design of the game is centered around multiplayer. I'm married with a kid, and exceedingly busy. I can't just get other people to come over and crowd my PC to play a game.

They're suggesting they didn't develop for online play because it is difficult, but isn't part of the Steamworks framework a method for using Steamplay?

I'd prefer support for both. As it is, it doesn't look like I could properly play the game, even though it looks like something I'd enjoy.

As great as this may be (I certainly believe that the reviewer was impressed - that much is clear from the article), it's still just a one-trick game. Shoot things in a linear 2D style of game. I'd get bored in about 10 minutes, no matter how much polish it has.

I've played the game with all 4 ships and am quite disappointed with most of them. The Beam's secondary attack is completely opaque so it's quite easy to run into bullets or enemies and die while using it.

The Gunner is probably one of the best ships though very hard to use well. It would've helped if the game allowed it to control like a twin stick shmup a la Geometry Wars.

The Bomber seems extremely useless as the radius of the blown up bullets is quite small.

The game was fun but I'm wishing I had waited for it to go on sale for $5 or less.

- True.- But then what would you do for the people on the keyboard or mouse? Think about it.- You have to get right in the enemy's face with the Bomber or else it is useless.

wytefang wrote:

As great as this may be (I certainly believe that the reviewer was impressed - that much is clear from the article), it's still just a one-trick game. Shoot things in a linear 2D style of game. I'd get bored in about 10 minutes, no matter how much polish it has.

I'm not sure what the purpose of your comment was. Are you panning the nature of 2D shmups or are you trying to encourage someone to take the 2D shmup further? And if you are getting bored in 10 mins I hope that's because you are kicking the games arse on its hardest difficulty. It's about the challenge of staying alive while getting a high score on a consistent basis.

I would probably get it except for the lack of online multiplayer. As a father and "adult gamer" (as hard as it is to say that) it is just too difficult to get anyone to come over and play, forget about sitting around a PC to play it.

Play with your kids? Hook a PC up to a TV (they are just big monitors now ya know...).

I'll have a real tough time with that. I yell and curse too much.

Me: FUCK you little shit, where did you get the BFG?Wife(from the other room): Are you talking trash to your son again?Me: Little noob's got the BFG and is camping the rocket spawn, he plays like a bitch!

FurryKing - Basically panning 2D shoot-em-ups. They're fun for a bit of distraction but I can't imagine being captivated by that type of game in light of what's available nowadays.

I agree. I've seen a bunch of games that look pretty much like this one online. Granted this one might flow nicer because it's not restricted to your browser... The only real "new" thing I've seen with 2D shoot'em-ups is the addition of a cluster-f*ck of sprites moving around all at once.